Aboard the Mothership Choosing the Right Motherboard for Your System Is an Arduous Task, Specially with So Many Brands and Chipsets to Contend With
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HD Media Players Gaming Stuff A massive round up of nearly all Find out which keyboard and the HD Media Players available in mouse will work the best TriedTried & tested tested 97 the market 102 for you ABOARD THE MOTHERSHIP Choosing the right motherboard for your system is an arduous task, specially with so many brands and chipsets to contend with. We make that task easier for you by testing over 30 boards (both Z68 and A75 chipset based) Source: photos.com Nimish Sawant pared back in January. The Z68 even though we’ve tested both G1 Sniper2 is the LGA1155 [email protected] chipset was launched in May and these chipsets, they should be iteration of the original G1 more recently, the A75 chipset considered as two separate com- Sniper which was available on hat moth- was introduced by AMD. We parison tests. the LGA1366 socket for the X58 erboard decided to do a shootout of chipset. The packaging of the should I boards based on these two Z68 Boards board and the board itself com- “Wbuy?” is chipsets. You can expect a `20,000 and up mand attention. A metallic bullet one of the most common ques- similar shootout of higher end A category of boards that is over- magazine acts as the heatsink for tions our readers ask us. Within chipsets, namely AMDs 990FX kill for most users, but there’s a the southbridge and has a cheeky motherboards, there are so many (already in the market) and definite demand for such boards. warning, “Not a weapon, cannot levels to consider that without Intel’s X79 (to be launched later It’s all about overclocking and be assembled as a firearm.” The proper guidance it’s very difficult this year) sometime next year. tweaking and of course the heatsink in the centre has five to pin down a specific board.DIGIT Needless to say, the Z68 and looks. We got three boards which LEDs that glow green when the This year saw the entry of A75 are two completely different were priced well over `20,000 board is powered on. Intel’s Sandy Bridge mother- chipsets and boards housing namely, the Gigabyte Z68X-UD7- The G1 Sniper 2 has features boards with the P67 and H67 these chipsets are not compa- B3, ASUS Maximus IV Extreme such as an on-board BigFoot chipsets, which Digit com- rable. For this precise reason, Z and Gigabyte G1 Sniper 2. Killer E2100 NIC and Creative 88 Digit | November 2011 | www.thinkdigit.com Bazaar Automatic OC faceoff Acer S3 Ultrabook, G’Five Tom’s Hardware did a piece on automatic G20 gaming phone, Microsoft overclocking and OC buttons on Mobos 106 Touch Mouse 2.... http://goo.gl/7HQ4a Motherboards Test HOW WE TESTED e believe that a motherboard’s per- For Intel Z68 boards the spacing between PCIe and PCI slots. If formance is completely a function of Processor: Intel Core i7-2600K a dual-slot card blocked the next PCIe slot, Wits components. The higher specced HDD: WD Velociraptor 600 GB marks were deducted. the components, the better the performance RAM: 2x2GB Kingston HyperX RAM For build quality we noted the sturdiness that you’ll get. For the same chipset, the varia- Graphics Card: ZOTAC GTX 560 of the heat sinks around the VRM (Voltage tion in performance is not very evident from our Power Supply: Cooler Master GX 650W Regulator Module) regions and the southbridge. scores. The difference is within the margin of OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64 Motherboards lacking a heatsink around the error. This can be easily understood by the fact For AMD Boards VRM region got a lesser score. Boards with all that benchmark scores from a `8,000 board are Processor: AMD A8-3850 solid state capacitors got a higher score. Back quite similar to the benchmark scores from a HDD: WD Velociraptor 600 GB panel I/O ports were noted and also the option `30,000 motherboard, give or take five percent. RAM: 2x2GB Kingston HyperX RAM to expand USB ports. Fan connectors and SATA So it ultimately boils down to the feature set Graphics Card: Integrated GPU AMD connections were noted. you’re getting with the motherboard, the build HD6550D Overclocking features such as utilities and quality, ease of overclocking and other factors. Power Supply: Cooler Master GX 650W on-board chip additions were taken into consid- Keeping this in mind, we decided to not give any OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64 eration. Boards having more options to overclock weightage to the performance scores. We have and tweak got a higher score. Also, the BIOS run the benchmarks, and the scores are shared The layout of the board was scored, we user experience was noted. Boards which didn’t in the tables on the following pages. In our final checked if there was enough spacing around have a UEFI BIOS got a lower score since that’s evaluation though, we’ve not considered these the CPU region to comfortably attach the CPU the future. scores as they don’t give you an estimation of cooler and which direction the SATA ports We did a thorough checking and testing the motherboard’s value. were pointing (those pointing up got a lesser (wherever applicable) of the feature set offered Our Test Rig comprised of the following score). Spacing between the RAM slots and by a motherboard and based on the price, have components: the graphics card was checked. We also noted decided on the winners. digital audio processor. It also The ASUS Maximus IV houses on-board amplifiers to Extreme Z belongs to the drive audio. On-board implemen- Republic of Gamers (RoG) series. tation of a good sound processor Build Quality is top-notch with is impressive for most users, but attractive crimson-black heat hardcore audiophiles will be sinks with multiple fins around disappointed and will invest in the CPU. The RoG logo glows red a dedicated sound card anyway. when the system is powered on. There’s a dedicated overclock Eight fan-connectors on-board button on the back I/O panel to will ensure sufficient cooling Source: photos.com overclock the processor on the for your system. fly without having to reboot the The Maximus IV Extreme Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3-iSSD system. Display ports are natu- houses an Nvidia NF200 chip rally absent. And needless to say, which controls second and fourth cards in SLI at x16/x16 speed (slot account. So, this shouldn’t be one it’s high time Gigabyte revamped PCIe16x slot, while the proces- 2 and 4), but there isn’t much of a of the reasons for you to consider the BIOS, Touch BIOS is a gim- sor’s integrated controller con- difference between the two con- this board. For those planning on mick and is nothing like the expe- trols the first and third. What this figurations as latency from the a three-way SLI setup, NF200 rience on a UEFI BIOS. DIGITmeans is that you can run two NF200 chip has to be taken into does help. Digit | November 2011 | www.thinkdigit.com 89 Nokia & NFC ASUS Zenbook UX21 Teardown Nokia launches NFC Hub to help in business Asus’ latest ultra-slim laptop, the 11-inch Zenbook development growth. http://bit.ly/oQ0lkx was taken apart to pieces. http://bit.ly/ob2c68 Tried & tested NOVEMBER 2011 NOVEMBER 2011 Z68 Motherboards Under `10,000 `10,000 to `14,000 `14,000 to `20,000 `20,000 and up Brand Biostar ASRock Gigabyte ASUS Intel ZOTACASUS ASUS ASUS MSI ASUS ZOTAC MSI Gigabyte ASUS MSI ASRock Gigabyte ASUS Gigabyte Z68 Z68 P8Z68 Z68 ITX P8Z68-V Maximus Z68MA- P8Z68-V Z68A-GD65 Z68XP- P8Z68 Z68X UD7 Maximus IV Model No. TZ68K+ Extreme3 Z68AP-D3 DZ68D8 P8Z68-V Z68 ITX B-E Z68A-GD80 Extreme7 G1 Sniper 2 MPro A-E LE IV GENE Z ED55 Pro B3 UD3-iSSD Deluxe B3 Extreme Z Gen3 Gen 3 Price (in `) 7,990 8,800 9,880 9,901 10,000 10,600 10,994 13,041 13,110 13,500 14,248 14,400 14,980 16,250 17,997 18,900 18,999 23,920 26,220 34,500 Features and Specs (Out of 70) 24.57 33.32 18.62 25.62 16.87 18.48 26.04 30.24 34.16 28.42 30.38 16.45 29.33 25.13 32.69 31.43 37.8 26.11 37.03 22.61 Board Layout (Out of 10) 6.5 7.4 7.3 6.6 6 6 6.6 7.6 7.3 6.8 7.2 6 7.15 7.3 7.5 6.9 7.2 7.35 7.6 7.5 Build Quality (Out of 15) 11.1 12.825 10.95 10.95 5.25 9.9 11.25 12.825 13.65 12.75 12.825 9.975 11.55 11.7 12.825 13.05 13.425 13.2 13.65 12.6 Package Bundle (Out of 5) 1.2 1 1.2 1.2 0.6 1.2 1.2 1.6 1.3 0.6 1.6 1.2 1.6 1.6 1.6 1.6 1.75 2 2.4 1.6 Overall (Out of 100) 43.37 54.545 38.07 44.37 28.72 35.58 45.09 52.265 56.41 48.57 52.005 33.625 49.63 45.73 54.615 52.98 60.175 48.66 60.68 44.31 Specifications Max. Memory Supported (GB) / No of DIMMs 4 / 32 4 / 32 4 / 32 4 / 32 4 / 32 2 / 16 4 / 32 4 / 32 4 / 32 4 / 32 4 / 32 2 / 16 4 / 32 4 / 32 4 / 32 4 / 32 4 / 32 4 / 32 4 / 32 4 / 32 No.